Thirty-Fifth of May

From China Digital Space

wǔ yuè sānshíwǔ rì 五月三十五日

Code for June 4, 1989, the date of the crackdown on pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square. (The military operation began late on the night of June 3.) Ordinarily the event is referred to as "June 4th," or simply "Six-Four" (Liùsì 六四), and often written "64." Since these terms are all sensitive words that alert web censors, netizens came up with a new way to mark the date, writing instead about the “Thirty-Fifth of May.”

In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, blog posts by "Deserter" and "17 Cats and Fish" reflected boldly on the time and place. "17" bypassed censors with references to "Something Something Square."

Novelist Yu Hua described the "spirit of May 35th"—in essence grass-mud horsism—in a 2011 essay for the New York Times.